


Team Human Week 2019

by fayrose



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, crteamhumanweek2019
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2019-12-10
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:07:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21718897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fayrose/pseuds/fayrose
Summary: Little snapshots of Beau and Caleb's friendship, with a few of the other Mighty Nein thrown in for good measure.
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett & Caleb Widogast, Jester Lavorre/Beauregard Lionett
Comments: 14
Kudos: 164
Collections: Team Human Week 2019





	1. Day 1 - Similarities

“You know, we are very different, you and I.”

“No shit.”

The retort was out of Beau’s mouth before she could even think about it. A natural reaction. She was used to people telling her that she was different. That something about her was wrong. Distasteful.

But caleb wasn’t usually one to talk during watches. Which meant that whatever he was trying to say, it was important. At least to him.

“But there are also a lot of similarities,” he continued, undeterred.

Ah, there it was. He was trying to bond. Which was kind of sweet. Not that she’d ever tell him that. And she kind of liked the way that he ignored her shit and carried on like they were having a nice, polite conversation and she hadn’t just been a reflexive asshole.

“Yeah?”

She’d bite, but as intriguing as this conversation was, she wouldn’t turn from the dark expanse beyond the limits of the dome. Caleb and she were back to back, he at the opposite edge of the dome, their backs to their sleeping companions, the fire crackling between them.

“We both worry more about what other people think of us than we would like to admit.”

Beau huffed and focused on the treeline. She was antsy and didn’t need personality analysis right not. Jester had wandered into the treeline to relive herself a few minutes ago and Beau was obsessively watching the spot where she disappeared. She didn’t like it when people left their bubble. Let alone Jester. Not after _that night_.

“Well jeez, Caleb. Get right to the heart of it why don’t you,” she snarked.

He laughed once, almost humourless.

A moment later, Jester came crashing none-too-stealthily out of the trees, grinning at them and waving.

Beau’s heart melted.

“Her maybe more than anyone else,” Caleb continued.

Beau rolled her eyes and blindly threw a rock over her shoulder, aiming for the sound of his voice.

“Gaaaaaaaah!”

Oops. That was definitely Nott. She probably deserved it, so Beau didn’t really care.

Her mind tuned out the mumbled death threats from across the fire and focused instead on retrieving the blanket she had set to warm by the fire.

“Here,” she said gruffly, holding out the blanket as Jester practically bounced into the dome. “Its cold out. You should get some more sleep.”

Jester’s smile brightened and she wrapped the blanket around her shoulders, wiggling with glee before she rocked up onto her tiptoes and brushed a kiss to Beau’s cheek.

“Thank you, Beau! You guys watch real good, okay, because I don’t have any healing spells left.”

“You do not have any healing spells left? This has never yet happened before,” Caleb teased, clearly having pacified Nott enough to re-join the conversation.

Jester rolled her eyes and stuck her tongue out at him, before prancing over to her bedroll, singing some made-up song.

“How long do we have left on our watch?” Beau asked once they had settled back down by the fire.

“Four hours and twenty-three minutes.”

“Wish I could do that.”

“No you do not.”

“No, I don’t.”

Silence stretched between them. The familiar sounds of crackling fire and their companions breathing the only sounds breaking the stillness of the night.

“Want to know what else we have in common?” Beau asked after a while.

“Ja.”

“We’re both too stubborn to admit when we need help.”

A sigh and then, “I do not need help, Beauregard.”

“No? Then I guess it’s just my imagination that you’ve been wound tighter than Nott’s terrifying-ass crossbow ever since we left Rexxentrum.”

Another sigh, long and deep.

“Beauregard…”

“It’s time you told them what he made you do.”

“Why?”

“Because we love you, Caleb. _I_ love you. We’ll have you’re back, man. And they need to understand how monumentally fucked up that place is. How totally fucking brave you were for going back, for facing him and holding your cool.”

Another sigh. Then silence. A long, uncomfortable silence.

Beau really did wish she had Caleb’s affinity for time in that moment. It felt like for fucking ever since she’d laid that out.

“I love you too, Beauregard. Watch is over.”

Before she could respond, Caleb had woken Nott and the moment had passed.

She touched Fjord’s shoulder to wake him for his watch as she navigated the tangle of bodies, making her way carefully towards the space that Jester had left for her.

Never had a spot on the floor looked more appealing. And more terrifying.

“I have thought of another one,” Caleb said, their eyes catching across the fire. “Neither of us are very good at admitting what we feel.”

Beau’s blood ran cold. Surely, he couldn’t know. He couldn’t have guessed. He was perhaps one of the least perceptive members of the Nein. If he knew…

“I literally just told you that I love you.”

He smiled, a little awkward but bright and true.

“Ja, and I said it back.”


	2. Day 2- Touch

Beau is _tired_. So monumentally tired that the word is emblazoned in bold on the inside of her eyelids. Bright red and painful.

Jester may have healed her wounds, but she still ached. Still felt like she’d fallen from the highest tower of the Cobolt Reserve. Fallen into the heap where she now lay, crumpled and groaning.

“Caleb,” she groaned. “Caleb you’re leaning on my bruise.”

First a grunt, then a slight shifting from where Caleb was collapsed against her side.

“There is nowhere that is not a bruise, Beauregard.”

She snorted.

“Fair.”

They were in a forest, leaning broken against a tree and they had just been annihilated. Again. Forests really weren’t their thing. Like, at all.

“You do both know that there are quite literally thousands of trees in this forest,” Fjord’s new, fancy voice said from somewhere beyond the black void of Beau’s closed eyelids.

“Ja, forests are made of trees, Fjord. We are aware.”

Beau snorted again. She loved that snarky wizard.

“Humans like to cuddle, Fjord,” Jester said in that half, jolly, half admonishing way she used to ‘tell them off’. “Especially Beau.”

Beau grunted.

“We’re not cuddling!”

“Looks like cuddling to me,” Nott screeched.

“Not cuddling,” Beau protested, weak still from their ordeal.

Objectively she could admit that it might _look_ like cuddling. But it was just their thing. As little as Beau wanted to admit it, she and Caleb always seemed to end up on the heavy end of the ‘ouch’ scale. So what if they ended up in a broken pile together at the end? It wasn’t cuddling, it was…

“Commiseration,” Caleb groaned.

“Yeah, what he said.”

There were giggles then. Jester and maybe Nott.

“This is a normal thing,” Yasha spoke up. “After battle, warriors rest together for warmth and comfort.”

Beau liked that. They were warriors together. Comrades in arms. They fought for each other’s lives, then sought comfort in the fact that each other were alive, no matter how broken.


	3. Day 3 - Betreyal

Caleb was staring off the edge of the roof like he was staring into the oblivion of the beacon. Around them, a storm raged. The wind howled through empty alleys and rattled shutters, making inn signs flutter like flags and Beau’s hair rip free of Jester’s careful braids. And the rain… the rain pelted cold and hard like only Empire rain could. Like a backhand from her father or the cool gaze of Trent Ikithon in the throne room of a king that none of them owed allegiance to. Not anymore.

Lightning forked in the cloud-filled sky, illuminating Caleb’s blank expression and the steady trembling in his hands. They had come the closest that they ever had to facing his past. It had been… bad. Very bad. He had quite literally come face to face with the man who had betrayed him to the highest possible degree. The man who had taken a child and slit crystals into his arms. Who had broken the mind of that child so severely that he had killed the family that he had loved more than anything. More than anything than the twisted loyalty that Trent had forced into their souls.

It made Beau’s blood boil. She wanted nothing more than to pummel that disgrace for a human being into the ground. To make it so that not a single sliver of that smug face remained.

“I hear you, Beauregard.”

She hadn’t exactly been trying to be stealthy. But he was so close to the edge that she hadn’t want to risk startling him. Somewhere, a hundred feet below in the shadows at the bottom of the tower, Nott was hiding. Ready to cast Feather Fall should Caleb slip and drop.

“Leave me be, Beauregard.”

She scuffled her feet in the dirt and bits of broken stone that always seemed to find themselves onto rooftops.

“Yeah, that’s not gonna to happen.”

He might be stubborn, but so was she.

“I am not going to jump. I just needed some time alone.”

“Yeah, well sucks to have friends who don’t want to leave you alone on a rooftop, doesn’t it?”

Any response that Caleb might have made was swallowed by the gale. The wind howled louder than any wind had a right to, buffeting Beau on her feet. If she wasn’t careful, she was going to blow off the bloody roof. She trusted Nott, but she’d rather not put that trust to the test.

“You reckon Yasha’s god is trying to tell us something?” Beau asked, fighting against the wind and rain.

“I am not a man of faith,” Caleb said blankly. Devoid of emotion. Like a slate washed clean by the rain.

“Yeah, like the gods care about that,” Beau muttered as she reached the ledge. “Wanna sit? Talk it out.”

But it seemed like the Stormlord had other ideas because right then a clap of thunder rocked the skies and Caleb… slipped.

Beau’s blood ran ice cold in the fraction of second it took for her lightning-fast reflexes to grip hard to Caleb’s rain-slicked hand.

“Jester! Yasha!”

She couldn’t hold him alone. Not with the rain and the cold and, frankly her less than stellar brute strength.

“Let go!”

“No!”

There was a bang behind her and Yasha came barrelling onto the roof.

“Beau!”

And then she was falling. Slipping from the roof a fraction of second before Yasha could reach them. Soaked to the bone and clinging to that damn wizard.

Falling.

And falling.

And falling until… Feathers.

For a moment she didn’t understand. Her fear robbing her of her senses until the sharp piercing cry of Caleb’s giant eagle form cut through the storm.

“Of course you can fucking fly!” She yelled, laughing and revelling in being alive on her bed of feathers as they soared up into the storm.

Trent may have betrayed him, but she was sure as hell that he wouldn’t ever do the same to them. She always knew he’d catch her. No matter how far she fell.


End file.
